Category: Around the House

Around the House, Computers and Internet, Writing

Writing Group, Facebook style

Back before all this coronavirus craziness hit, our public library had asked our writing group to consider having an online presence. People had complained that they weren’t able to come at noon on a Wednesday, not to mention for a two-hour period all at once. Some people in wackier places, like the Phillipines, wanted to join our group as well. A poll of the current group took place –the people attending said they couldn’t meet or didn’t want to meet in the evenings, so we were at an impasse.

The library decided to set us up with a Facebook Group page, with our four in-person facilitators (myself included) as moderators. Today we started our online writing group adventure a little earlier than we had planned for, due to coronavirus closing our library. One of our facilitators figured out how to pre-schedule posts so they could go up when she wanted them to, just in case she turned out to be unavailable at the right time. Prompts got posted several times over the two-hour time slot we usually met. People could come and go, writing at whatever time worked for their schedules.

Personally, I was having internet woes by that point in the day. Having extra people at home using the internet constantly means that sometimes the internet goes wonky when you least expect it. So I wrote on the prompts later in the day. Other people have joined in, several of which I haven’t met in person before. I think it went pretty well, so I’m going to volunteer to moderate for next week. 🙂 Let me know if you want to join us and I’ll shoot you a link to the online group.

Around the House, I Really Do Cook, My Own Personal Weirdness

St. Patrick’s Day, social distancing version

Today has been weird, y’all. Super weird. My Tyler Critique Group canceled their meeting, which I’d expected, as all four of us have immune system issues or family members that do. Nick’s workplace said they’d let anyone with immunocompromised family members start working from home. The kids and I set up a desk area for him in the corner of our bedroom next to my desk so he’d have a quiet place to work.

This used to be the reading nook.
See? Right next to me. Also, he will need both lamps. That corner is dark, oddly enough.

Since I couldn’t go out for supplies like I wanted to, I had to be a little weirder with my St. Patrick’s Day things than I normally would have. We did start the day like normal, with Irish music blaring out of the living room speakers. I did not have an Irish style breakfast planned, however. I did have white chocolate fudge makings, though, so we made that instead.

Of course we made it green. 🙂
It tasted good, but never set unless thoroughly refrigerated. Two minutes on the counter and it was ooze again.

I ran around the house like this, pinching everyone that wasn’t wearing green, which meant Nick. I also made people randomly wear headbands or hats with shamrocks on them. There were many complaints.

For lunch, it was green mac-and-cheese. Usually I don’t have to do lunch on St. Patrick’s Day because they are usually in school. No one would eat it. Ah, me.

By dinner I was too exhausted to do the kind of in-your-house- pub-crawl like my awesome friend Amie did at home. Instead, I sat on the couch and Nick occasionally brought me an Irish beer. Wheeeeeeee!

Dinner was an Irish style dish that I cannot spell now that I have had beer. Have a photo instead.

Hope you had a lovely St. Patrick’s Day! Good night!

Around the House, Family Time, Lifelong learning, Music, Parenting, Writing

Social Distancing

Today was supposed to be a several things that it wasn’t.

Kids were supposed to be back at school, but the district is having what they call a “Community Mitigation Period” instead. They’re cleaning the schools and we’re supposed to be back on schedule next week. Ree is a little bit wumbly over it because he left his instruments at school because of the wisdom tooth removal. He’s already heard from his band director that this weeks pass offs are still due. *sigh*

We were also supposed to have our belated Lindale Critique Group meeting today. Since we usually meet at a McDonald’s off a busy highway and two of our members are immunocompromised, we decided we should probably all stay home this time. So we exchanged critiques by email, which is never as enlightening as meeting face to face is. Ah well, hoping next time goes better.

I was supposed to finally have at least an afternoon at home alone, which didn’t happen. Instead I talked to kids about the coronavirus and what the schedule at home would look like. We’re going on a modified summer schedule for now. Morning are quiet movies, exercise, and chores. Afternoons are video games, some outside time, instrument practice, and reading. Evenings will be mostly as normal as they ever get. One teacher has offered online flute lessons. We shall see how that goes.

Finally, our East Texas Writer’s Guild had its usual Nutz & Boltz meeting online via Zoom. We had some good conversation about things. (I have notes if anyone is interested.) 🙂 At least one thing went off like normal.

Around the House, Computers and Internet, Everywhere But Home, Lifelong learning

Spring Break Summary

Yesterday Spring Break ended. It wasn’t that exciting. Nick and I were minorly sick the first weekend, then Ree had his wisdom teeth out that Monday.

I saw the Endodontist on Tuesday and they told me I needed a tooth removed and sent me back to my regular dentist to have that done. I got a new shelf for my desk area that I found on deep discount at Michael’s when I looked for planner stuff. I got it all set up the way I liked.


Wednesday was the writer’s group at the library, which sadly I skipped because we were trying to get everything done so we could leave on time the next morning for College Station. We got Greg a laptop computer so he could start typing most of his assignments, which we’d discussed with his 504 committee the week before.

We drove down to College Station on Thursday. By then the coronavirus crazies had started. Nick tried to go to the grocery and they had announcements the entire time about what you could and could not buy. A fight broke out in the parking lot, and he came home without toilet paper. The rest of us just stayed at the house and watched movies.

Movie watching and dog snuggling
We also played games!

On Saturday, Steph and I were supposed to attend a Marbling Workshop at the Bookbindery. It ended up canceled. I went out with my dad and bought him a new computer so he could teach classes online for the next week or so until all this social distancing stops. His old computer was ancient, y’all. This was completely necessary.

Today I spent the morning fixing up the computer for my dad and transferring files and all that goodness. It took forever. Setting up two computers in two weeks. What was I thinking?! Eventually we drove back home. Bluebonnets have started showing up in fields now that weren’t there when we drove down. Could it be Spring?

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, health, My Own Personal Weirdness, Writing

Pneumonia and other disasters

My youngest has pneumonia — they diagnosed it on Monday. My family of five had four dentist appointments and one doctor’s visit scheduled this week even before that happened. We’ve been to the doctor every afternoon this week besides that. I still made it to a critique group on Tuesday and led a lesson on the Snowflake Method at the public library group on Wednesday. My eldest son sat with the smallest so I could go. Other than that it’s been pills and breathing treatments and trips to the pharmacy over and over. In one five-minute window, while sitting in the doctor’s office and overseeing a breathing treatment, I spoke to one other doctor’s office about how the scan from last week showed that my thyroid was “super enlarged”, the dentist about my husband’s recovery from minor dental surgery, and the endodontist to schedule an appointment for my abscessed gums, all while texting with the flute teacher about her own bout of pneumonia and the French horn teacher to say that we really couldn’t make it this week. Today I had to reschedule two other appointments because of bad schedules at the places I was going (how do they manage to schedule people onto days the doctor won’t be there?). All this to say that there has been no writing this week, other than the four-page document I wrote about the Snowflake Method. *sigh*

Around the House

Little disasters

Last week our clothes washer overflowed. Just a little bit. Once, twice, three times. We thought it was just because of the rain. Our neighborhood waste water system always backs up and we’re the last house on the line, so we always get hit with the weird smells and backed up line.

Thursday, the kids told me their showers had been slow to drain. Saturday I noticed the whole bathroom floor was wet after my husband’s shower, but I attributed it to a lack of bath mat.

Then Sunday, after my longer-than-usual shower, the flood hit. Water was everywhere and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Nick eventually figured out what the problem was. We had to cancel our board game day. Everyone was sad. Well, one kid wasn’t, but he never enjoys game day anyway.

This stormy morning, I called the plumber this morning and a couple hours later two noncommunicative men came out and worked on the drain line. Thankfully it was not raining at that point. They said maybe four sentences to me. I missed my dentist appointment, but the clog has left now, life can go on.

Around the House, Family Time, I Really Do Cook, Parenting, What I Love

Halloween 2019

Our Halloween… over at my parents house around the corner, of course. 🙂 We had a pretty good turnout, but still had one whole bag of candy leftover at the end of the night. We watched HalloweenTown, but not HocusPocus because my children have decided to rebel and say they “hate” HocusPocus. Ah well, at least we had the traditional Taco Soup.

Around the House, health

Thank God, life can be normal again

All my people are home from their various places now. David and Nick have been to the Feast of Tabernacles at the Steamboat Springs site in Colorado and they had quite the adventure getting back home because they got caught in a blizzard without snow tires or chains. They ended up having to do a huge detour to get home. Greg was in Lake Texoma with his aunt, uncle, and girl cousins with a different FoT group than we went with a couple years ago, but they stayed on site at the same resort that our main festivities were at last time, so it was familiar for him. They all had fabulous times at the places they went and I’m sure soon I’ll see more photos of their trips.

They were gone for about 10 days, about 8 of which I was sick with a horrific sinus infection — like hallucinations, fever, two kinds of antibiotics sick. Poor Ree. He was stuck home with me, which meant that sometimes he had to make his own meals and once he seriously offered to walk to the grocery story (he doesn’t drive yet. We need to work on that.) In any case, we are glad other people are back now.

Around the House, Friend Time, I Really Do Cook, Lifelong learning, Music, My Own Personal Weirdness, What I Love

Nurturing Oneself

I had an early brunch with a dear, dear friend of mine this morning. As we sat in her sweet little breakfast nook with tea, boiled eggs, and stollen, we chatted about how the year was going and she asked me what I was doing to nurture myself. Honestly y’all, I babbled out an answer full of things that made her go “THAT’S what you find nourishing?” Things like scheduling things, making sure everything had a task associated with it, being better organized, etc. She expressed a bit of doubt with my methods, but being the gracious hostess she is, she just let it go and the topic moved onward.

I got home a while later and really started thinking about it. I am not really a planner. Oh, I try and try to be, but in the end every plan lasts a few days and then I scrap it. So I spent some time just meditating on the idea of nurture and what it meant to me.

Here’s what I came up with:

  1. Nurturing me means extra time around everything so I can digest experiences. Yes, that means a bit of planning, but it is soooo good to have time around things and not just be chock-a-block busy.
  2. Nurturing me also means time for music, which I have not been making. The words “I haven’t played the piano since I got these progressive lenses” slipped out of my mouth and now that I’ve ruminated on it, I got the glasses in January (9 months ago) and haven’t really touched the piano since my mom died.  Hmmm….
  3. Nurturing me means time to read. I have “Time to Read” in my Habit Tracker, but how much have I really been reading? None. Like one day a week, which is very close to none for a Lisa.
  4. Nurturing me also means eating foods I actually like. My husband is very good about cooking dinner, but he is very bad about making food that I really am fond of. Part of that is that the kids hate everything and part of that is that we really, Nick and I, have a totally different palate. I’ve been cooking my own lunches this week and eating all the things I love, like mushrooms and onions and zucchini and sweet potatoes and cabbage, and have been so happy at lunch time!

Anyways, that’s what’s on my mind today. Time to go eat the mushroom/onion/zucchini/feta dish that’s been sauteing while I type. 🙂  Hope y’all have a good afternoon!

Around the House, Friend Time

Board Game Day!

We had a delightful board game day today! Lots of people showed up, dragons were played with by a small girl in a hippo mask, a choose your own adventure game was acted out, we found out that several of us are absolutely terrible at charades, and lots of food was eaten. 🙂 thanks to everyone who came!!